Touch is an Art
by btch sprinkles
Summary: In my Killer in Pink Universe, John Watson is adjusting to his disability, but sometimes he has his bad days. Sherlock, at times, fails to understand, but the beauty of Sherlock is that he doesn't give up trying. Sherlock/John


AN-Just a drabble I had in my head. I'm on a slight hiatius, though I have part of the next bit of Killer in Pink written, it might be quite some time before I upload. I do apologise, but I hope this little thing makes up for it!

John wished he'd been warned about random body parts the first time he came into contact with one. He had been warned about Sherlock's incredible messes, and he'd been warned about his incessant violin playing. Sherlock talked to John, whether he was there or not, and it was awkward for John to come into a room in which Sherlock had been clearly conversing with him for some time.

The kitchen was the most impossible place for John to navigate, even with the braille tags that Sherlock had helped him set up, and even with the organization plan they'd come up with together. John had always liked cooking, and wanted to continue that, but his constant inability to predict what beakers and petrie dishes were where, and the fact that Sherlock was always knocking about in there with Bunsen burners and chemicals and microscopes made it difficult.

It was when John's hand came to rest on a severed foot that he nearly lost it. Sherlock was sitting at his microscope and John was standing by, waiting for the kettle to whistle. He meant to place his hand down on the table so he could keep steady as he leaned in to give Sherlock a kiss on the top of the head.

He moved his hand down slowly, to keep from knocking over something important, but didn't expect his fingers to come to rest on cold, dead, soggy flesh. He knew what it was instantly, a body part, and he froze.

"What am I touching?" he asked. His voice was low and full of utter panic and horror.

Sherlock instantly looked down at John's hand, stood up and took John by the shoulders. He steered him round to the sink, turned on the water and began to wash the soiled fingers off gently. "It's a foot," Sherlock said as he toweled off John's hand.

"A foot? A dead foot?"

"I borrowed it from the morgue," Sherlock said simply.

John's hands were trembling now. "Sherlock," he said, trying to maintain control, "you have to warn me. You have to tell me if there are disembodied parts lying about our kitchen. You have to warn me when you've put a jar of eyes where the olives usually are!" His voice began to take on a stronger, angrier tone. "You have to tell me if I'm about to knock over corrosive acids that are going to eat through my shoes and blister my feet! I can't keep living like this!"

Sherlock was very, very sorry. There was no doubting that. The thing was, even in the short time they had been living together, solving cases, making things work, shagging, sleeping along side one another, Sherlock had come to realize that this was love. It first occurred to him that he didn't want to think about having to ever live without John, and when he realized that, he realized that it had to be love.

Had he said it? No, Sherlock wasn't one for mincing words, but the thing was, John knew, and Sherlock new John loved him back. When John was upset, when John felt helpless or lost, which was less and less now, but still happened from time to time, Sherlock hurt with him.

When it was Sherlock's fault that John felt that way, Sherlock felt worse. He went into the lounge with John and stood while John collapsed on the sofa. "My apologies," he said. "I've been careless."

John rubbed his eyes hard with the heels of his palms. "Sherlock, I'm tired of you having to be careful. I'm tired of you having to tell me, 'John, I've put my violin on the table, mind your step, the bridge is sticking out near the sofa.' 'John, I've set your cup at two o'clock, and the biscuits are at nine o'clock.' I'm so tired of it."

John did fall into these moods, not as often anymore, but they still happened. He accepted his loss of sight, for the most part. The doctors finally confirmed that the sight he had now, blurry, pale, like looking through a bed-sheet, was the best it was going to get. They told him to consider himself lucky that he hadn't lost his eyes in the blast, that he had as much vision as he did.

If John held a book cover up to his nose, sometimes he could make out the letters, if they were in stark contrast to the background. That didn't change the fact that he could not see his lover's face, and even his own reflection was lost to him now.

Usually he was okay with it, but sometimes he was not.

He accepted the kisses of apology from Sherlock, however, and couldn't deny that the touch from the tall detective made things seem better, now matter how upset he was. But sometimes he was angry that he couldn't be careless in the kitchen while making a pot of tea, and that he had to be told when there was a severed foot on the table.

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John had mainly grown accustomed to his lifestyle, of the manner of sight he had left, of having to explore and remember his world through his fingers, his ears, his nose. He had gone on cases with Sherlock, worked hard, worked well. He blogged about them, which Sherlock hated, but he didn't mind Sherlock's ire over his words.

Sherlock was mostly good about it, too. He'd been clear about not being John's seeing eye dog, but he was usually careful with him. He never left John alone on crime scenes anymore, always kept him oriented if John got lost. It was alright.

Sometimes, though, the work would get to Sherlock. He would get overly excited, careless, forget that John wasn't as adept to the world as he was, not yet anyway.

John had come in from a stroll around the block, something he preferred to do alone. Sherlock was in the kitchen, and John paused in there to say hello. His cane was folded under his arm and he sat it on the chair before bending over to kiss his lover.

Then Lestrade walked in, offering a brief hello before he declared that there was a break in the case. Sherlock was on his feet, nearly knocking John to the ground. "Go on, we'll get a cab!" Sherlock shouted.

The air in the room was excited and tense. John was trying desperately to keep up with Sherlock's pace, but his hands searched all the usual places for his cane and it was nowhere. He checked the chair but it was gone. His fingers felt over the floor, but nothing. In the dim haze of his vision he saw no trace of it.

Sherlock was anxious, irritated. "Come on, John!"

"I can't find my cane. Go on without me, this will take too damn long."

"Catch a cab when you find it, you know the address," Sherlock called out, fueled by the excitement of another dead body to examine. He left John sitting on the floor. In the anticipation of more murder, Sherlock had failed to hear the defeat in John's voice.

Three hours later Sherlock returned to see John still seated on the floor, his back against a chair, his fingers touching the edge of his cane which had harmlessly rolled under the leg of the table. He'd found it, eventually, two hours later.

He'd cried for a while, too, but the tears had dried, though his eyes were still a bit swollen. Sherlock immediately fell to John's side. "Are you hurt?"

John shook his head, pushing Sherlock away from him. "No. I found my cane. Finally."

Sherlock looked down and saw John's knuckles were a bit raw, and the floor had scuff marks on it. "What happened?"

"I'm tired, Sherlock," John said. He shoved Sherlock even further away and used the chair to help himself up. His legs were a bit numb from sitting on the floor all day, and he was woozy from not having eaten. "I'm so effing tired, Sherlock, of slowing down. Of having to take my time. Of having to do this," John said, and reached out blindly until his fingers came into contact with Sherlock's microscope, "to know what the hell is on the table."

"John," Sherlock said quietly.

"You rushed off, excited by the new development. You probably solved the case, didn't you?" John laughed when Sherlock's silence betrayed him. "You solved it, without me, because you don't need me, and that's always been obvious. I dropped my cane on the floor and because of that, I missed the entire case. What's the point?"

John shoved past Sherlock, into the bedroom and slammed the door. He collapsed on the bed and let out a breath, wondering how long it would take Sherlock to come in after him. Sherlock didn't, though, not for some time. Not until after John had dropped off to sleep.

John woke to the feeling of warm hands on his naked stomach, and he reached down to feel Sherlock's bare arm stretched over him. "I didn't want to wake you," Sherlock said softly.

"I probably shouldn't have slept," John said groggily. He tried to get up, but Sherlock kept him pressed down.

"You're right, John," he said after a few moments of silence. "You aren't very useful on cases. The things you figure out with your remaining senses are things I'd figured out before I even got on scene most of the time. We're constantly at risk of contaminating evidence because you need to touch everything, and I did solve that case without you."

John felt his throat tighten. "So what's the point, Sherlock? I was a doctor before, and I can't do that now. I tried to play at this detective rubbish, but if I drop my cane, there's a chance it'll take me two hours to find it, and I can't have you finding everything for me all the time." John fell silent a moment. He reached up and found Sherlock's chin with his fingers, then his mouth. He let his fingers just rest, still and quiet, on Sherlock's lips for a bit and then he dropped his hand. "It kills me sometimes, that I'll never see your face. All the time people tell me how beautiful you are. How far is it that you should have to look at my scars and I can never see those piercing eyes that everyone adores so much?"

Sherlock bent down and kissed the space between John's neck and shoulder. John shivered and leaned into it, but Sherlock pulled away. "When you came in here," Sherlock said quietly, "I put my bandages back on and finished out the day blind. It's quite easy to lose perspective when one doesn't live blind all the time. Even if I played at it when we met, I never truly understood."

John swallowed but said nothing. He didn't know what to say to that, Sherlock spending the rest of the day without his sight.

"I came in here while you slept and listened to you breathe. I felt the warmth radiating off of you, and occasionally felt you shift and move with your dreaming. I'm sorry I forgot so readily what it's like to live in your world. That I haven't been more patient. I know you insist that I shouldn't have to be patient, but I do. I existed in my world, John, until I met you. I was Sherlock Holmes before we met, and now I've become closer to human than I have ever been. I've never really cared before you, John, about myself, about anyone. I was proud in what I could do, but I never really cared."

John let his fingers interlace with Sherlock's, resting above his head. He felt Sherlock's curls nestle under his chin as Sherlock laid his head on John's chest.

"I see things, John, with my eyes. I see, and I observe, and I deduce the world around me. We human beings spend so much time honing our sight, and after that our hearing, and perhaps our sense of smell and taste. What always falls short is touch."

Sherlock shifted and started to unbutton John's shirt. His long, thin, violinist fingers traced up and down, around his stomach, up around his nipples, under his chin. John shivered and fought back a moan.

"The way you see the world, through your hands, it's an art, John. It's delicate and deliberate and beautiful. If I had to spend the rest of my life unable to look at your face, I would be crushed, but I would take comfort in the fact that touching you... that this..." he slowly snaked his hands into the front of John's trousers and grasped him lightly, "this is so much more. It's so much closer, and beautiful. You talk of yourself as scarred, and you are, but that makes you no less beautiful to me. And I don't' care what the rest of the world thinks of you, John, because they don't matter."

John reached up with his face and kissed Sherlock, hard and desperate and wanting. His hand went up to Sherlock's face and felt the bandages still wrapped around his eyes. "You're still wearing this," he pointed out.

"Even footing, John," Sherlock said and John could feel his lover's grin against the side of his face. "Now we touch, and we feel. We will taste and caress, and I think it will make so much more sense."

Sherlock's embrace was warm, it was rough, and heavy and it was exactly what John wanted. It was exactly what John needed. Feeling Sherlock's fingers explore him the way John explored the world every day was what John needed to feel right then.

He was a bit embarrassed at how quickly he climaxed, but the embarrassment was soon washed over by Sherlock's own climax, and the quiet cry against the side of John's neck. John particularly liked the way it felt when Sherlock shuddered against him, his skin hot and sweating, his thin fingers tugging and clenching as he felt the spasms of the Little Death course though him.

When it was over, Sherlock removed the bandages and fetched a wet cloth to wipe them both up. Being fickle as he was, Sherlock switched out the blankets, though he left the sheets, and together they lay across the bed, tired, sweating and sated.

John could make out the faint outline of the roof in the dim light of the setting sun, and when he turned he could see the silhouette of Sherlock's face laying against the stark white pillow. He let his fingers trace up and down Sherlock's thin chest, and relished the feeling of Sherlock's long fingers toying with his hair.

"I'm sorry I was so upset," John said eventually. "I try and force myself to get over the frustration of not being able to see, but sometimes it's too much."

"I wish I could promise that I'd be more patient, that I'd wait for you two hours to find your cane, if that's what it took, but I can't," Sherlock said.

"I wouldn't want you to," John replied quietly. "You wouldn't be who you are and I..." John trailed off and sighed.

"You what?" Sherlock pressed.

"It's nothing."

There was a thick silence and then Sherlock said, "I love you, John. If love means that I cannot live without you, that I need to touch you, smell you, taste you, every day, than yes, I love you."

John felt his heart leap, his stomach twist and face grow hot. He knew Sherlock loved him, but he honestly had never expected him to say it. Ever. "I love you, too. Every little imposable bit of you, Sherlock, I love."

Sherlock leaned his head down on John and gave a quiet yawn. The room was cooling off, and the sun had nearly set now, and they were bot impossibly content. "You never have to say it John. Believe me, I know."


End file.
